The] episodes in Texas Reconstruction history that Mr. Crouch relates, perhaps do more than broad generalizations to explain why the Freedmen's Bureau failed, and how we lost the peace after the Civil War.
(New York Times Book Review) Crouch skillfully presents the Freedmen's Bureau as one of the most unique, misunderstood, and maligned ad hoc reform agencies ever devised by a democratic government in the name of social and political freedom and equality.
(East Texas Historical Journal) . . . breaks new ground in Reconstruction history. [Crouch's] study is among the first on the bureau in Texas and the first to focus on the subdistrict agent, the subassistant commissioner.
(Journal of Southern History)
